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M.A.R.

9:00 PM

@Spevacus Trump said he can say what an elephant is so he's cognitively able to handle presidency. That's 2020

Mithical

no that's 2016

M.A.R.

No I'm being literal. He claimed he aced a cognitive test in 2018, while the test was one of those typical psychological tests

theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/19/…

Spevacus

Goodness

M.A.R.

@PM2Ring There's such a thing as exhausting funniness resources

PM 2Ring

Jon Ericson has just posted a nice answer to Shog's "Report Card" question.

M.A.R.

9:04 PM

Although XKCD's probably not there yet.

@PM2Ring ding

PM 2Ring

@M.A.R. True. I don't get much joy from them these days, but I still check them all, just in case. I used to be a member of the xkcd forums, before they got hacked & disappeared a year ago. :(

M.A.R.

You may recall, I used the phrase "bricks without straw" in a call with an exec back at the start of 2019, when we were informed our team was losing executive representation. I got... The verbal equivalent of 🙄. And of course, the CM team is now half the size it was then, which was already half the size it needed to be. I feel... Incredibly bad for my former colleagues. — Shog9 15 mins ago

Spevacus

M.A.R.

I guess in case we ever deluded ourselves that everything is almost back to normal, you need these folks to tell you it isn't.

Cat's probably almost getting crushed in the workload.

Spevacus

Cat's activity has been off the charts, and it's still not enough.

She's trying, and succeeding in many places, but there's so much to attend to.

M.A.R.

9:09 PM

Or, if that's an exaggeration, she only ever gets time to do the normal stuff. Post election results, a few meta answers. Nothing resembling a big picture

Spevacus

Right.

Well... The mod council is neat. But Shog's pointed out a fair few holes in its responsibility pool as well.

M.A.R.

How many folks can you dedicate to 0.015%, amirite. Or was it 0.0015?

@Spevacus Yeah, I can't read Discord much. Every time I pop in 50+ messages in like 4 channels and new messages in 10. How do you guys keep up?

Spevacus

I also don't always read backlog.

I skim pretty hard.

user400654

i didn't find the discord... interesting enough to stay in

Spevacus

I also sometimes feel out of my depth with the discussions brought up. I've not been around nearly as long as many of the active participants there.

M.A.R.

9:11 PM

I'm a good skimmer but only in case I remember to skim. I don't

Rob

Pinguinos

M.A.R.

@user400654 Well, it's like letting your belt loose one or two buttons. And some folks like Shog only ever chat there. And I use it for other stuff too, so SE's is always there

PM 2Ring

And of course, it's not just the increased workload from having the team halved. Losing those guys lost a huge chunk of institutional knowledge. And the remaining CMs have the extra frustration of not having the tools / resources / power to do what they know needs doing.

M.A.R.

@PM2Ring touche, you can hire someone else, but they won't be user 811

Spevacus

In time, maybe, but they could never replace him.

M.A.R.

9:15 PM

Shog was not only as CM as a CM could get, he was also as "user" as a user could get. He even got into some trouble back in 2010 when he wasn't hired yet, AFAIK (I wasn't around then, I'm not that old)

Spevacus

Also was an active developer IIRC

M.A.R.

Yeah before his CM role I think

Or with it shrug

Mithical

@M.A.R. nah

M.A.R.

@Mithical shrug

Mithical

he just did dev as necessary to hack together tools etc. that needed to be built

Spevacus

9:16 PM

He worked on the timeline in his spare time...

M.A.R.

He fixed bugs now and then too

SO wasn't big enough for strictly defined roles and evil villain lawyers and such.

Rob

A remarkable man:

A: Thank you, Shog9

How did everything run so smoothly ? Shog9 at the controls.

user400654

eh, iunno. guess i'm just too used to speaking with those people with the constraints that exist here. i found it uncomfortable

though... moving to a discord with the bulk of the old JS chat regulars was great

Mithical

What kind of constraints?

user400654

here, there's real consequences of acting out

suspension and the like

there... at most you lose access to a discord server

i prefer how well things are curated here over discord

for topics related to SO/SE meta

Mithical

9:20 PM

I mean if something is seriously a problem... it'll get taken care of

I basically treat it like the Tavern

M.A.R.

@Mithical of course you can talk more liberally there

HDE 226868

@Mithical There's a famous observatory where many of the auxiliary systems used during observations - weather monitoring, target tracking, etc. - were all hacked together by some astronomers and technicians in their free time a couple of decades back - and now they're considered essential for observing.

Rob

Over at YouTube it's almost instant, flag and poof. YMMV.

M.A.R.

Folks that join Discord have a lower probability of just showing up to protest downvotes or close votes or similar. So it's sort of an honor system and you can talk more freely there because of the fewer 'built-in' restrictions on what you can talk about.

@Rob It does vary. My experience has been flagging the most outrageous comments and nothing happens. So I don't anymore.

Perhaps everyone there already has this epiphany and that's why it's such a dump

@Mithical You don't, even if you say you do. Nobody does.

Rob

Last few weeks it's been instant, maybe AI. [cue spooky music]

M.A.R.

9:25 PM

One could only hope. But I just think YouTube is a dump of immaturity I never want to be associated with.

Mithical

@M.A.R. alright. I treat it as close to the Tavern as is reasonable, accounting for the differences in mediums and tooling

M.A.R.

My experience mostly revolves around watching a few sciency videos and mostly just movie reviews and gossip.

Rob

So you're a drop-in.

M.A.R.

So, IME, it's the single place you can trust to find people who've gravely misunderstood a movie or say the whiniest, stupidest things possible about some event etc.

@Rob Yeah

Rob

When you have a lengthy history of helpful flags / bug reports with YT & G it's different.

M.A.R.

9:28 PM

It's the place to find teenagers learning and trying out their recently learned alphabet words

I mean, of course, occasionally, very awesome people visit YouTube, as is probably true for most social media

@Rob I have a lengthy history of trying to improve Google Translate drop by drop

Mithical

I do that occasionally but it always seems like I'm just providing free labor for a major company and it's like.... why should I do that

M.A.R.

But even that turned into shit shovelling. Perhaps there is some meat to those parental internet control mindsets

Rob

@M.A.R. What we see, may not be what you get:

PM 2Ring

9:51 PM

@M.A.R. 99.9% of my YouTube usage is watching music videos. I have fairly broad musical tastes. With some music genres, the comments are mostly sane & civil. But with some of them, things can get political &/or nasty. Or just plain stupid.

1 hour later…